HART Board Privately Weighs ‘Funding Scenarios’ For Remaining Rail Construction
The city has tried and failed several times to award the contract for that work. Bids in the latest effort were due this week.
Board members overseeing Honolulu鈥檚 Skyline transit construction met for more than 90 minutes behind closed doors Friday to discuss what was described as 鈥渉ypothetical funding scenarios鈥 to build the rail system as far as Kakaako.
The discussion occurred three days after the latest bids for the project鈥檚 pivotal “City Center Guideway and Stations” contract were due to the city. Board members haven’t seen those bids, but concerns remain over whether they came in on budget as construction labor and materials costs continue to rise.
Several previous attempts to award the city center contract have failed in the past decade amid Skyline鈥檚 myriad cost and schedule woes.
On Friday, board members sought legal advice from agency attorneys and were briefed on how Skyline鈥檚 last major construction contract might eventually be awarded, Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation Chair Colleen Hanabusa said at the meeting.
The HART board did not get any information on the bids for that work or the bidders, Hanabusa added. That would violate state procurement law, she said.
The $10 billion transit project is funded with state and federal tax revenues. It鈥檚 not clear what if any funding scenarios board members discussed Friday, and they made no other mention of the city center contract during the rest of the meeting.
Last year, the rail agency estimated it would cost between $1.1 billion and $1.4 billion to build a Skyline route that was shorter than the one covered in the previous city center award attempts. That new route would end approximately a mile short of the original Ala Moana endpoint with two fewer stations.
Still, the contractors that watch the Skyline project for the federal government and even HART itself have flagged growing labor and material costs as a top threat that could sink this latest attempt at a city center contract procurement.
In the most recent failed attempt, the city tried to award the city center contract under a public-private partnership that would have covered rail operations and maintenance, too. However, that effort was delayed about a year, largely due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It ultimately failed in 2020 when each of the two bids came in about a billion dollars over what HART had budgeted.
HART set a deadline of Aug. 27 that year to award the contract 鈥 about a month after the bids came in. That deadline passed, however, and it eventually became clear that the procurement was not going to happen.
Four years later, HART has set a deadline of Aug. 23 to evaluate the latest bids and award the contract.
